Abstract:
Lakdasa Wikkramasinha, the young Sri Lankan poet who died by
drowning in 1978, has been considered as the most ‘original’ poet appeared
on the Sri Lankan scene. His poetry is very much related to Sri Lankan
lifestyle, culture and society. There is a local inspiration that governs most of
his poems. Furthermore, his language is peppered with local forms and
idioms which according to most critics, certainly reveals the sense of ‘Sri
Lankanness’. There are also elements of post-colonial hybridity and bi culturalism in his poetry. This paper looks into the possible ways by which
we can attribute the notion of ‘originality’ to Lakdasa Wikkramasinha’s
poetry. The paper examines in a detailed way, how Wikkramasinha tries to
capture the Sri Lankan experience in his poetry and the emergence of Sri
Lankan identity through the usage of his language, which is considered as
distinctively ‘Sri Lankan’.
